DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A father is behind bars after investigators say he drove across the country and killed his 5-year-old son.
The boy was staying with his grandmother in DeKalb County when Montrais Boyd and the child's mother unexpectedly showed up Wednesday night.
Channel 2's Carl Willis has been digging into Boyd's past and obtained police dashcam video showing Boyd being arrested after a high-speed chase in Arizona a year ago, with that same son in the back seat of his car.
The final moments of the video show Boyd, naked, being taken away in handcuffs.
Boyd was charged with malice murder in court on Thursday, one day after, police said, he used a knife to slit his 5-year-old son's throat and then tried to bury the boy's body in the backyard.
The dashcam video was taken in June. Investigators said Montrais Boyd Jr., who was 4 years old at the time, was in the car when Boyd rolled it on a highway in Flagstaff, Arizona.
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Witnesses said Boyd was lying naked in the street. Police said he started pummeling a police car with his fists and then rammed it with his car, all before driving the wrong way on the highway and crashing with his son in the car.
Willis looked into why Boyd was out of jail after having been charged with aggravated assault with a dangerous instrument, felony endangerment and child abuse.
Online records show that his case in Arizona did not go to trial and that Boyd was ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation to determine if he was fit to stand trial. It's not clear if that evaluation took place.
On Wednesday, DeKalb County police said Boyd drove from California to his mother's home in Lithonia. Police said he was left alone with his child and that's when he killed him.
"There were other children in the home. He could have done something to the other children," Tinesha White, who lives next door to the boy’s grandmother, told Willis. "Very scary to know that he's out on the street with all of those charges on him."
Boyd remains in the DeKalb County Jail on charges of murder.
Cox Media Group
